


What Light May Bring

by SullenSiren (lorax)



Category: Dragon Prince series - Rawn
Genre: F/M, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-25
Updated: 2004-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-06 19:22:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorax/pseuds/SullenSiren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Her strength had kept secrets buried under desert-tanned skin."</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Light May Bring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [researchminion](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=researchminion).



> Written for researchminion for the yuletide challenge. I didn't have access to the source materials to double check the time frame, but this is shortly after the Vellant'im began their attack and just before Tobin's stroke. If the time frame is off, I apologize. I put them on order to re-check some things at the library, but they did not come in time.

**What Light May Bring**

  
_"... It is the desert's grimness, its stillness and isolation that bring us back to love. Here we discover the paradox of the contemplative life, that the desert of solitude can be the school where we learn to love others."  
\-- Kathleen Norris_

 

It is a strange thing for a Sunrunner to fear the light of sun and moon; but she did. In shadow and rain, when clouds coated the sky and none could follow the threads of light for fear of being lost in the shadows that passed through the beams, she was safe. She could walk beside uncovered windows and not fear the touch of brilliant colors and distant minds.

It is not the colors that frightened her. It is not the touch of those minds – many familiar and beloved. Scattered and strange though the _faradhi'm_ may be, there are few whose minds are not welcome to her – even the one who rules them, though it is long since his colors shone brightly for her. No, it was not the Sunrunners she dreads, it was the news they bring.

They fight a desperate war and the news they carry from it was never good. Even small victories were tinged with losses. Along the rays of sunlight, or the thinner, more fragile touch of moon Tobin could feel the sorrows of the mothers without sons, the husbands without wives, the children without fathers. She remembered the battle she fought in, and wars of words she'd helped wage, and inwardly she seethed at the knowledge that she is of a past time, and this war is fought by her children – what remain of them.

Part of her – the mother in her, perhaps – feels pity and sorrow for those voices, those who mourn.

The part that is the daughter of an unforgiving land, the child of the Desert Prince himself – feels the scorn of the battle-worn soldier for the newly initiated. A brotherhood between them, yes, but they were new and untested; their worth and strength unknown. Tobin knew her strength.

Her strength had buried two of three sons and lived on. Her strength had seen father fall and brother make war. Her strength had sewn the clothes her eldest wore into a fight he might not win. Her strength stood at castle walls and shot down those who approached, while far away her husband and brother camped beside salted earth and tried to believe the cost was worth the spoils that might be won.

Her strength had kept secrets buried under desert-tanned skin. It had seen a son turn to a stranger with hooded eyes whose heart she could no longer trust, and whose passion burned more dangerous than the desert sun that had seen him birthed. The desert marked its children – it weathered them and made them stronger, finer. Tempered in fire, were the line of Zehava. The strength of her blood had seen four sons down to three, three to two, two to one, and had not buckled when the pain of loss flayed at her heart like storm-driven sand.

But when she passed through sunlit windows and walked moon-brightened gardens she feared the ray of light that would tell her she'd lost the last of her children. It was not weakness to know fear – Rohan had taught her that. Weakness was to be ruled by it, though, and so she knew she would face the window eventually. But first she sat at her dressing table in the shadows and brushed out long black hair whose threads of gray gave proof to a life she counted as well-lived. She watched the windows, and tried to read the light before she touched it.

"Tobin?" Chay stood in the sunlight, yellow framing the silver of his hair, the still-handsome face that watched her, the strong body that had never forgotten the strength it took to wield a sword, or the gentleness it needed to calm a frightened colt.

For a moment, she envied him. She envied him the calm that would never know the touch of a sun-carried heartbreak. "I'll be right down."

"The kitchen staff is in disarray. Half are claiming that you asked for more wheat and the others say we're overstocked on wheat. It's deadly down there. I was nearly decapitated by a cook with a skillet." His deep voice held the wry amusement that had always been such a part of their life together. Tobin was her father's daughter – given to temper and fury and wildness. Chay's quiet humor and stoic weathering of her storms were what made him her match. She'd known that long before the joining vows. Some nights she took out the contract that had joined them and read the aged and yellowing parchment, smiling as she traced the lines that forbid her knives in the bedroom.

_"Zehava's daughter."_ Chay had told her with feigned gravity then, as she read through the contract. _"I take my life in my hands just marrying you. I'm sure to be sleeping in my own stables as soon as our first child becomes irritating enough to put you in a foul mood. I ought to at least have some guarantees."_

Her father had laughed, clapping Chay on the back in approval. It added to the family legend, Tobin knew. She wondered now what her father would say of the lives his children had made for themselves. Her brother, the _Azhrei_, High Prince now with his Sunrunner-witch wife whose power and determination were as much a legend as the cunning of her dragon-born husband.

And then there was her. Tobin knew what she was. Wife, mother, friend, lover, sister, advisor – she was all of that. She was a rock for others to grip when they went afloat, the fierce-eyed and indomitable Lady of Radzyn Keep – or so they thought. Tobin was well aware of the value of appearances, and when she floundered only her husband saw. When she felt adrift she needed only to reach for Chay, and she would stay grounded.

But this hadn't been what she'd imagined. "Is this how it always is? End one war, make one peace, another war begins? Parents burying their sons, children growing up without their fathers, blood and war and battle over things that don't really matter in the end."

If he was thrown by the abrupt question he gave no sign. "Yes."

She'd known that. Sometimes she was glad that she had not been trained to use her gifts properly, that she had not seen the images that the water at the woman-tree might show her. Like the dragon-sense that made them extraordinary, there was something of a Seer in the blood of the desert born. Or perhaps they were just nearer to death and saw it in their futures more clearly than those who hailed from softer regions. She would have seen the death and pain of the future, she was sure.

"Then what's the point?"

"The point is trying to make a peace that lasts. Whether or not it's possible, without the attempt there's nothing."

She knew he was right. But she'd been married to him far too long to admit that. "You reason like a man, you know that?"

"There's an excellent reason for that."

"I'm well acquainted with that reason." She told him dryly.

"Not so well as you will be tonight, wife." He leered playfully at her and she smirked at the expression, feeling a slight thrill go through her body – a passion that had never seemed to die for them, though it waned and waxed like the moon at times – usually waning when Chay was being most irritating, or doing something she disliked. He gave her a tender smile. "You worry too much, Tobin."

"I wanted our sons to grow up without the war and the hate that we had. Now our son fights odds worse than what we faced. And there is nothing I can do about it. I am . . . helpless."

He frowned slightly. "We have two sons, Tobin, and both fight in their way, you know that. And you could never be helpless if you tried. Anyone who suggested you were would likely spend a week regretting it while they nursed their wounds."

She smiled faintly and stared at her hands. "I hate that I don't know my son, Chay. I hate that I have to love him with caution. I hate that I can't trust his truth."

"I know." He didn't try to convince her that Andry was trustworthy. They knew one another well. He knew when her mind couldn't be changed. And she wasn't the only one who feared their son was lost. "This is their war, Tobin. Their world to fight for and shape."

"And will they pray for their children to grow up in peace, and then grow decrepit and useless while a new war comes for their little ones?"

"Maybe. Though I resent the 'decrepit and useless' description, since it in no way applies to us. Or at least not to me."

She smiled despite herself and threw her brush at him. He caught it neatly. "You are a bull-headed husband."

"True. But what better prey for a dragon-born wife?" He smiled and handed her the brush back. "Now are you going to come down and calm the chaos, or am I going to go move in with Maarken and Hollis at Whitecliff?"

"I suppose I'll come and save your hide. Honestly, if it weren't for me this place would fall apart."

"Naturally."

She stood slowly and walked to her husband, lacing her arm through his. The sunlight found her face and she closed her eyes, waiting to see if it carried anything but warmth.

She opened her eyes and smiled slowly, meeting the well-guarded concern in Chay's gaze. "Another day, husband."

He leaned down to kiss her and her mind turned from thoughts of death to thoughts of life.

But the worry stayed with her, always, lingering in the back of her mind. There were many windows in their home, after all, and outside their walls, across miles of sand and solitude there was a war being fought.

She prayed that time or the war would take her before it took the last of her children.

~end~


End file.
